The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation's Crisis by Joseph A. Altsheler (little bear else holmelund minarik txt) 📗

“Me? I'm goin' to keep this lantern an' help Yank here find his friend. Ain't he done stuck with us till we found Sam, an' I reckon I'll stick with him till he gits the boy he's lookin for, dead or alive. Now, you keep Sam straight, and walk him back to camp. He ain't hurt. Why, that bullet didn't dent his skull. It said to itself when it came smack up against the bone: 'This is too tough for me, I guess I'll go 'roun'.' An' it did go 'roun'. You can see whar it come out of the flesh on the other side. Why, by the time Sam was fourteen years old we quit splittin' old boards with an axe or a hatchet. We jest let Sam set on a log an' we split 'em over his head. Everybody was suited. Sam could make himself pow'ful useful without havin' to work.”

Nevertheless, the lantern bearer gave his brother the tenderest care, and watched him until he and the men on either side of him were lost in the darkness as they walked toward the Southern camp.

“I jest had to come an' find old Sam, dead or alive,” he said. “Now, which way, Yank, do you think this friend of yours is layin'?”

“But you're comin' with us,” repeated Jim.

“No, I'm not. Didn't Yank here help us find Sam? An' are we to let the Yanks give us lessons in manners? I reckon not. 'Sides, he's only a boy, an' I'm goin' to see him through.”

“I thank you,” said Dick, much moved.

“Don't thank me too much, 'cause while I'm walkin' 'roun' with you friendly like to-night I may shoot you to-morrow.”

“I thank you, all the same,” said Dick, his gratitude in nowise diminished.

“Them that will stir no more are layin' mighty thick 'roun' here, but we ought to find your friend pretty soon. By gum, how it rains! W'all, it'll wash away some big stains, that wouldn't look nice in the mornin'. Say, sonny, what started this rumpus, anyway?”

“I don't know.”

“An' I don't, either, so I guess it's hoss an' hoss with you an' me. But, sonny, I'll bet you a cracker ag'in a barrel of beef that none of them that did start the rumpus are a-layin' on this field to-night. What kind of lookin' feller did you say your young friend was?”

“Very tall, very thin, and about my age or perhaps a year or two older.”

“Take a good look, an' see if this ain't him.”

He held up the lantern and the beams fell upon a long figure half raised upon an elbow. The figure was turned toward the light and stared unknowing at Dick and the Southerner. There was a great clot of blood upon his right breast and shoulder, but it was Warner. Dick swallowed hard.

“Yes,” he said, “it's my comrade, but he's hurt badly.”

“So bad that he don't know you or anybody else. He's clean out of his head.”

They leaned over him, and Dick called:

“George! George! It's Dick Mason, your comrade, come to help you back to camp!”

But Warner merely stared with feverish, unseeing eyes.

“He's out of his head, as I told you, an' he's like to be for many hours,” said the lantern bearer. “It's a shore thing that I won't shoot him to-morrow, nor he won't shoot me.”

He leaned over Warner and carefully examined the wound.

“He's lucky, after all,” he said, “the bullet went in just under the right shoulder, but it curved, as bullets have a way of doin' sometimes, an' has come out on the side. There ain't no lead in him now, which is good. He was pow'ful lucky, too, in not bein' hit in the head, 'cause he ain't got no such skull as Sam has, not within a mile of it. His skull wouldn't have turned no bullet. He has lost a power of blood, but if you kin get him back to camp, an' use the med'cines which you Yanks have in such lots an' which we haven't, he may get well.”

“That's good advice,” said Dick. “Help me up with him.”

“Take him on your back. That's the best way to carry a sick man.”

He set down his lantern, took up Warner bodily and put him on Dick's back.

“I guess you can carry him all right,” he said. “I'd light you with the lantern a piece of the way, but I've been out here long enough. Marse Bob an' old Stonewall will get tired waitin' fur me to tell 'em how to end this war in a month.”

Dick, holding Warner in place with one hand, held out the other, and said:

“You're a white man, through and through, Johnny Reb. Shake!”

“So are you, Yank. There's nothin' wrong with you 'cept that you happened to get on the wrong side, an' I don't hold that ag'in you. I guess it was an innercent mistake.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye. Keep straight ahead an' you'll strike that camp of yourn that we're goin' to take in the mornin'. Gosh, how it rains!”

Dick retained his idea of direction, and he walked straight through the darkness toward the Northern camp. George was a heavy load, but he did not struggle. His head sank down against his comrade's and Dick felt that it was burning with fever.

“Good old George,” he murmured to himself rather than to his comrade, “I'll save you.”

Excitement and resolve had given him a strength twice the normal, a strength that would last the fifteen or twenty minutes needed until this task was finished. Despite the darkness and the driving rain, he could now see the lights in his own camp, and bending forward a little to support the dead weight on his back, he walked in a straight course toward them.

“Halt! Who are you?”

The form of a sentinel, rifle raised, rose up before him in the darkness and the rain.

“Lieutenant Richard Mason of Colonel Winchester's regiment, bringing in Lieutenant George Warner of the same regiment, who is badly wounded.”

The sentinel lowered his rifle and looked at them sympathetically.

“Hangs like he's dead, but he ain't,” he said. “You'll find a sort of hospital over thar in the big tents among them trees.”

Dick found the improvised hospital, and put George down on a rude cot, within the shelter of one of the tents.

“He's my friend,” he said to a young doctor, “and I wish you'd save him.”

“There are hundreds of others who have friends also, but I'll do my best. Shot just under the right shoulder, but the bullet, luckily, has turned and gone out. It's loss of blood that hurt him most. You soldiers kill more men than